27 years later, what's your opinion on the hit adventure game MYST?

[Leeroy ST]

5 minutes ago, zzip said:

So is Indiana Jones, but they made two adventure games based on that.

Indiana jones was known more as an adventure platformer than a in your face action game like Star Wars games were since the VCS.

 

5 minutes ago, zzip said:

but it would probably sell better than something like "The Dig" that they were still producing at the same time.

Yes, this is true.

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Indiana jones was known more as an adventure platformer than a in your face action game like Star Wars games were since the VCS.

They actually put out two games under the title "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade",  one was a platformer and the other was an Graphics Adventure

 

https://www.mobygames.com/game/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-the-action-game

https://www.mobygames.com/game/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-the-graphic-adventure

 

[Bill Loguidice]

They definitely branched out into non-action genres, like with the Star Wars strategy games and the well-received Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series. They were probably reluctant to do a Star Wars adventure game because use of the original characters in that regard was probably forbidden at the time. It's one thing to stick them in a fighting or chess game, it's another to create an actual story-driven adventure. LucasArts was always weird about use of their Star Wars properties.

In terms of the adventure gaming discussion and the rise and fall of LucasArts adventures, and similarly what happened with Telltale more recently, I guess there's a certain genre fatigue with some of the more specific genres after a while. Sales eventually flatline or drop, and then the costs to keep creating more goes up. It then becomes the purview of mostly independent studios to take up the mantle.

[Leeroy ST]

10 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

They definitely branched out into non-action genres, like with the Star Wars strategy games and the well-received Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series. They were probably reluctant to do a Star Wars adventure game because use of the original characters in that regard was probably forbidden at the time. It's one thing to stick them in a fighting or chess game, it's another to create an actual story-driven adventure. LucasArts was always weird about use of their Star Wars properties.

In terms of the adventure gaming discussion and the rise and fall of LucasArts adventures, and similarly what happened with Telltale more recently, I guess there's a certain genre fatigue with some of the more specific genres after a while. Sales eventually flatline or drop, and then the costs to keep creating more goes up. It then becomes the purview of mostly independent studios to take up the mantle.

Tell tale always seemed like it was over hyped on the internet, It never made sense for such a company to be as big as the bubble made you believe so it didn't surprise me at all when it was reported they were going under. Them being reported as a behemoth out of nowhere always caused me to be skeptical. 

[ChildOfCv]

On 9/13/2020 at 2:35 PM, Leeroy ST said:

But sometimes this was on purpose and developers would intentionally make insane puzzles that were meant to make you take a hammer to your TV. Even Kings Quest did that with V and VI. Including a decision that you wouldn't realize makes the game impossible to beat until hours later.

KQ was horrible for completely ass-pulled solutions.  Who ever even thought of throwing a horse's bridle at a deadly snake that was in your path?  What would even make you consider that as a possibility?

 

KQ6 was actually the first one I completed without even consulting a hint book though.  There were some puzzles at the end that required you to consult the manual, but other than that it was finally a good mix of not obvious but at least solvable.

 

On 9/10/2020 at 12:03 PM, wierd_w said:

Remember, this is the era of "Giant blazing quest markers" to guide people to a quest destination. No such "Blatantly obvious" guidance was given BITD.

Yeah I hate that Final Fantasy went full swing in that direction.  You're not playing a game.  You're following a story that offers few chances to deviate, other than to play mini-games.  FF1 and DQ1 were fun because you actually had to gather clues from townspeople and such.  Then they even nerfed that for the re-releases, by making items in your inventory auto-activate where they need to instead of requiring you to go into the "item" menu to use them at the right place.

[+davidcalgary29]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

There may have been a hype factor too.   These games were hyped up from the magazines I was reading at the time- especially when Hitchhikers came out, and I bought into it.   I had a new floppy drive and wanted to see what I could do with it.

 

I played Zork, Enchanter, Hitchhikers.   I also got Deadline, never got far.  Bueracracy,  again never got far and maybe one or two others.   I think I just grew weary of the format.   I wonder how many others that happened to?  Tried a few games and that was enough.

Infocom games were not considered to be video games by a lot of critics, and I think that this made them an acceptable form of entertainment to those who wouldn't dream of stepping into an arcade. This snobbery  was even true of the Atari-specific rags, but I suppose that this is fair enough, given that none of the articles were written by (and for) the five-to-eighteen demographic. Adults weren't supposed to be playing games on their computers; they were Serious Business Tools. If you wanted to play games, you were supposed to sneak a round of Pitfall! on the kids' 2600 when no one else was looking. 

 

You're certainly going to limit your market if you require a certain degree of literacy (and/or facility to read written English) in order to play, and to require your players to have a familiarity with canonical sci-fi/fantasy literary works in order to get the greatest pleasure from them. I was a pretty literate kid, but I'd certainly never read Lord of the Rings (any) before I played Zork. You'd think that Infocom would have offered its games in French, German, or Spanish in order to tap into the international market.

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Infocom games were not considered to be video games by a lot of critics,

I remember the term interactive novel being used a bit.

[zzip]

16 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Infocom games were not considered to be video games by a lot of critics, and I think that this made them an acceptable form of entertainment to those who wouldn't dream of stepping into an arcade. This snobbery  was even true of the Atari-specific rags

I used to subscribe to Electronic Games, and I'd have to say they weren't snobby at all..  until the team of Katz/Worley/Kunkle left and were replaced by a new editorial team.  Then suddenly that changed and the new team had that hip urban snobbery that many critics have.   They started pushing the hell out of 'interactive fiction', (not that it was absent before, but previously all genres were treated as equal).   Also the magazine stopped being fun and went belly up within months.

 

17 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

You'd think that Infocom would have offered its games in French, German, or Spanish in order to tap into the international market.

I think there was more of a push to internationalize your software starting in the 90s.   It wasn't so common in the 80s.   I remember as an ST owner, I had to learn a bit of German to use some of the cooler applications. :)

[Leeroy ST]

21 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:

KQ was horrible for completely ass-pulled solutions.  Who ever even thought of throwing a horse's bridle at a deadly snake that was in your path?  What would even make you consider that as a possibility?

 

KQ6 was actually the first one I completed without even consulting a hint book though.  There were some puzzles at the end that required you to consult the manual, but other than that it was finally a good mix of not obvious but at least solvable.

 

Yeah I hate that Final Fantasy went full swing in that direction.  You're not playing a game.  You're following a story that offers few chances to deviate, other than to play mini-games.  FF1 and DQ1 were fun because you actually had to gather clues from townspeople and such.  Then they even nerfed that for the re-releases, by making items in your inventory auto-activate where they need to instead of requiring you to go into the "item" menu to use them at the right place.

It was easier but iirc KQ6 still had one of the "if you use the item on a thing that a sane person would obviously think to use it on, you won't know you were supposed to use said item on another puzzle until you are hours into the game" puzzles.

 

Also agree on FF, the linearity started with 6 and went off the rails as the PSX games became more narrow and the narrative started controlling the gameplay once FFX came out it became ridiculous. 

[Stormtrooper of Death]

Myst is comming on the Oculus Quest (VR platform). So, everybody with that headset can play Myst in Virtual Reality.

 

Here is the link for the Quest version: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2719294624823942/

[leech]

On 9/10/2020 at 10:52 AM, zzip said:

I'd say what LucasArts and Sierra were doing was a better successor to the text adventure genre.

 

Agreed,  especially when they pushed 3D into games that really didn't need it.   Suddenly your PC is struggling to play a 3D version of a game that looks worse than the 2D version that preceeded it.    I like 3D now that it looks good,  but hated it back then.  You are right though that 3D tends to age poorly

Really, the first game to actually use 3D correctly was the original Unreal game (at least that I remember).  It looked amazing on a Voodoo card!  To be fair, it wasn't until the Voodoo cards came out that 3D accelerated games had any sort of 'standard' to work on, as before that there were like 5 different APIs all with different abilities....

 

I actually beat Myst on the JagCD, as that was really the first CD-based system I had.  I think we got the Win95 computer right around that same time though.  Kind of a crying shame the Jag didn't release with the CD, it probably would have had maybe one or two more games released for it

[leech]

On 11/20/2020 at 3:42 AM, Stormtrooper of Death said:

Myst is comming on the Oculus Quest (VR platform). So, everybody with that headset can play Myst in Virtual Reality.

 

Here is the link for the Quest version: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2719294624823942/

The makers did a game called Obduction for VR.  I own it, but haven't played it yet.